_________________________________________________________________________________________________"You can run on for a long time, Run on for a long time, Run on for a long time, Sooner or later God'll cut you down." (Johnny Cash)

malena stool wrote:http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/02/bin.laden.dead/index.htmlHeard it on early morning news.

Hi malena, there is much suspicion because Obama"s body was buried at Sea. Apparently the U.S. had agreed tohonour the tradition of burial within 24 hrs, and they were probably concerned if his body had been buried on Landit would become a shrine.

Panda,It was the best method of burial all round, his religious beliefs have been satisfied and there is no possibility of a shrine being raised. However he will be hailed by his followers as a martyr and there is a long way to go before the effects of his teachings and convictions no longer pose a threat to normal society.

I FIRST REALIZED THIS NEWS WHEN I TURNED ON TV AND SAW A BBC NEWS SPECIAL AT .12.30 SAYING OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS KILLED,WHEN I TOLD MY CARER ABOUT 11.15,SHE SAID IT HAD HAPPENED THIS MORNING,DIDN'T BELIEVE AT FIRST.

Surprise surprise! The CIA is now warning of revenge attacks. Bin Laden died years ago and this is the lead up, imo, to Obama's redemption in the eyes of the public: a 'false flag,' event where he will play the hero, rallying the American people against the great threat. It may even be a Libyan who plans this major event, which would give Obama the excuse to really send in the big guns.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________"You can run on for a long time, Run on for a long time, Run on for a long time, Sooner or later God'll cut you down." (Johnny Cash)

Osama Bin Laden's body 'identified by sister's brain'Osama bin Laden's body was identified by US authorities by matching a DNA sample to one taken from his late sister's brain, according to reports.

Osama bin Laden was shot in the head and chest by US Navy seals Photo: Sipa Press/Rex Features2:36PM BST 02 May 201120 CommentsWhen his sister, who has not been named, died from brain cancer several years ago in Boston the FBI immediately subpoenaed her body so that it could later be used to identify the al-Qaeda leader if he was caught, it was claimed.The brain was preserved and tissue and blood samples taken from it were used to compile a DNA profile, ABC News reported.The tissue sample was reportedly then matched to the DNA of the man shot dead by US troops in a raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.He was shot in the head and chest by US Navy seals in a firefight in the compound, which had been monitored by the CIA for months.US officials confirmed that the body had been identified by a DNA test conducted in Afghanistan. He was later buried at sea.

A national security official told CNN there were multiple confirmations of bin Laden's identity, adding that they used "facial recognition work, amongst other things, to confirm the identity.”A government spokesman said the burial had been "handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition".

How can DNA tests have results so quickly?? And the Americans said no USA citizens were hurt yet the eyewitness (in Carmens video post) said the helicopter was shot down. And the body is buried at sea so quickly? Until we see a video of him being shot and him lying there dead l'll stay cynical sadly.

Panda wrote: I just hope followers of Bin Laden don"t retaliate in Western Countries. It appears from TV News he no longer was Head of the Terrorist Organisation now, there are several splinter groups.

My post just disappeared but l said..

There'll be recriminations for years. We're coming to London by train in a few weeks to show our little one the sights, l was nervous before but now l'm worse.

No doubt there will be time to reflect more deeply about the news announced by President Obama last night. For now, I thought it might be useful to annotate some of the initial headlines.

On where he was found:

Abbottabad is essentially a military cantonment city in Pakistan, in the hills to the north of the capital of Islamabad, in an area where much of the land is controlled or owned by the Pakistan Army and retired army officers. Although the city is technically in what used to be called the Northwest Frontier Province, it lies to the far eastern side of the province and is as close to Pakistani-held Kashmir as it is to the border city of Peshawar. The city is most notable for housing the Pakistan Military Academy, the Pakistan Army’s premier training college, equivalent to West Point. Looking at maps and satellite photos on the Web last night, I saw the wide expanse of the Academy not far from where the million-dollar, heavily secured mansion where bin Laden lived was constructed in 2005. The maps I looked at had sections of land nearby marked off as “restricted area,” indicating that it was under military control. It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without it coming to the attention of anyone in Pakistan’s Army.

The initial circumstantial evidence suggests the opposite is more likely—that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control. Pakistan will deny this, it seems safe to predict, and perhaps no convincing evidence will ever surface to prove the case. If I were a prosecutor at the United States Department of Justice, however, I would be tempted to call a grand jury. Who owned the land on which the house was constructed? How was the land acquired, and from whom? Who designed the house, which seems to have been purpose-built to secure bin Laden? Who was the general contractor? Who installed the security systems? Who worked there? Are there witnesses who will now testify as to who visited the house, how often, and for what purpose? These questions are not relevant only to the full realization of justice for the victims of September 11th. They are also relevant to the victims of terrorist attacks conducted or inspired by bin Laden while he lived in the house, and these include many Pakistanis as well as Afghans, Indians, Jordanians, and Britons. They are rightly subjects of American criminal law.

Outside of the Justice Department, other sections of the United States government will probably underplay any evidence about culpability by the Pakistani state or sections of the state, such as its intelligence service, I.S.I., in sheltering bin Laden. As ever, there are many other fish to fry in Islamabad and at the Army headquarters in nearby Rawalpindi: An exit strategy from Afghanistan, which requires the greatest possible degree of coöperation from Pakistan that can be attained at a reasonable price; nuclear stability, and so on.

Pakistan’s military and intelligence service takes risks that others would not dare take because Pakistan’s generals believe their nuclear deterrent keeps them safe from regime change of the sort underway in Libya, and because they have discovered over the years that the rest of the world sees them as too big to fail. Unfortunately, they probably are correct in their analysis; some countries, like some investment banks, do pose systemic risks so great that they are too big to fail, and Pakistan is currently the A.I.G. of nation-states. But that should not stop American prosecutors from following the law here as they would whenever any mass killer’s hideout is discovered.

Of course, Mullah Omar and Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri probably also enjoy refuge in Pakistan. The location of Mullah Omar, in particular, is believed by American officials to be well known to some Pakistani military and intelligence officers; Omar too, they believe, is effectively under Pakistani state control. Perhaps the circumstantial evidence in the bin Laden case is misleading; only a transparent, thorough investigation by Pakistani authorities into how such a fugitive could have lived so long under the military’s nose without detection would establish otherwise. That sort of transparent investigation is unlikely to take place.

On who was living with Bin Laden:

The early reports suggest that he was living with his “youngest wife.” Bin Laden, who would have been fifty-three years old when he died yesterday, had always lived surrounded by family and children, so it was not surprising that he had managed to do so even as a fugitive. He is known to have married at least four times. His first wife was a cousin from Syria. His second and third wives were highly educated Saudi women. His fourth wife was a kind of mail-order teen bride from Yemen whom he married while living in Afghanistan during the nineteen-nineties, according to the account of bin Laden’s former Yemeni bodyguard. Bin Laden’s Syrian and Saudi wives were said to have gone home before or immediately after the September 11th attacks, and the Saudi wives were said to be living in the kingdom, without contact with Osama. When I visited Yemen in 2007, to conduct research on the bin Laden family, Yemeni journalists told me that his youngest wife had returned home and was living in the region either of Tai’zz or Ibb, significant cities to the south of Sanaa, the capital. It seems that she may have found her way to Pakistan to live with her husband. My own guess had been that bin Laden would have accepted informal divorce from his older wives on grounds of involuntary separation, and would have remarried a local woman or two while in hiding in Pakistan, perhaps a daughter presented by one of his Pathan hosts. That is at least conceivable as well. Apparently, one of his adult sons was killed in the raid. Osama has more than a dozen sons. Some have returned to Saudi Arabia but others have appeared in videos with their father, vowing to fight alongside him. It is conceivable that one of his sons could make a claim on Al Qaeda leadership in the years ahead.

On what bin Laden’s death means for Al Qaeda:

On the constructive side: The loss of a symbolic, semi-charismatic leader whose own survival burnished his legend is significant. Also, Al Qaeda has never had a leadership succession test. Now it faces one. The organization was founded more than twenty years ago, in the summer of 1988, and at the initial sessions bin Laden was appointed amir and Ayman al-Zawahiri deputy amir. It is remarkable that, for all the number threes killed and all the ways in which it has been degraded since September 11th, Al Qaeda had retained the same two leaders continuously for so long. Zawahiri is famously disputatious and tone-deaf. His relatively recent online “chat” taking questions about Al Qaeda’s violence did not go well. Bin Laden was a gentle and strong communicator, if somewhat incoherent in his thinking. Zawahiri is dogmatic, argumentative, and has a history of alienating colleagues.

On the other hand: Al Qaeda is more than just a centralized organization based in Pakistan. It is also a network of franchised or like-minded organizations, and an ideological movement in which followers sometimes act in isolation from leaders. The best guesstimates are that Al Qaeda has several hundred serious members or adherents in Pakistan, along the Pakistan side of the Pakistan-Afghan border, and perhaps up to a hundred scattered around Afghanistan. Just last week, the German government disrupted a cell near Dusseldorf in which one of the members, of Moroccan origin, had allegedly traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he received explosives training from an Al Qaeda contact. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, appears to be just just as potent. Dan Benjamin, the State Department counterterrorism coördinator, gave a speech last week at New America that provided a very good, up-to-date summary of Al Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide, their capabilities and connections to one another.

On the hunt itself:

After President Obama took office, he and the new Central Intelligence Agency director, Leon Panetta, reorganized the team of analysts devoted to finding Osama bin Laden. The team worked out of ground-floor offices at the Langley headquarters. There were at least two-dozen of them. Some were older analysts who had been part of the C.I.A.’s various bin Laden-hunting efforts going back to the late nineteen-nineties. Others were newer recruits, too young to have been professionally active when bin Laden was first indicted as a fugitive from American justice.

As they reset their work, the analysts studied other long international fugitive hunts that had ended successfully, such as the operations that led to the death of Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, in 1993. The analysts asked, Where did the breakthroughs in these other hunts come from? What were the clues that made the difference and how were the clues discovered? They tried to identify “signatures” of Osama bin Laden’s lifestyle that might lead to such a clue: prescription medications that he might purchase, hobbies or other habits of shopping or movement that might give him away.

The Langley analysts were one headquarters egghead element of the hunt. Similar analytical units at Central Command in Tampa and at the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul sorted battlefield and all-source intelligence, designated subjects for additional collection, and conducted pattern analysis of relationships among terrorists, couriers, and raw data collected in the field. Detainee operators in Iraq, Afghanistan, at Guantanámo and at secret C.I.A. sites also participated. Apparently, the breakthrough started several years back from detainee interrogations; it’s not clear yet how or by what means the information about the courier who led to the Abbottabad compound was extracted.

Overseas, C.I.A. officers from the Directorate of Operations and the Special Activities Division—intelligence officers who ran sources and collected information, as well as armed paramilitaries—carried out the search for informants from bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Units from the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which includes the Navy Seals, Delta, and other specialized groups, joined in. Often, Special Operations and the C.I.A. worked in blended task force teams deployed around Afghanistan, and, more problematically, as the Raymond Davis case indicated, around Pakistan.

These teams searched not only for bin Laden, but also for other “High Value Targets,” as they are legally and bureaucratically known inside the U.S. government. My understanding is that as of this spring, there are approximately forty legally designated, fugitive High Value Targets at the top of the wanted list system. If there were forty, I suppose there are now thirty-nine.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/notes-on-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html#ixzz1LDPhIZQc

Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad in Pakistan. Photograph: Ho/ReutersNews of Osama bin Laden's death was first leaked on Twitter by Keith Urbahn, the former chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary under President George W Bush.

Urbahn's "reputable person" may well have been Rumsfeld himself - who in turn may have been tipped off by George W Bush, who was phoned by President Obama with the news ahead of the public announcement.

Urbahn said in a tweet after this story was filed that his source was "a connected network TV news producer", adding: "Stories about the 'death of MSM [mainstream media]' because of my 'first' tweet are greatly exaggerated."

At the time President Obama was still writing his speech in which he would announce the killing of the US's most-sought enemy.

Urbahn added "Don't know if it's true, but let's pray it is". A navy intelligence officer, Urbahn could have had multiple sources, given that the US Navy SEALS force - equivalent to the UK's SAS - was involved in the attack that killed bin Laden.

The information having leaked out on the social network, it began to be confirmed by sources within the White House, the New York Times reported. President Obama had initially planned to speak at 10.30pm EST (0330 BST) but the announcement was delayed to roughly 11pm, apparently because he was writing and redrafting the speech himself.

Osama bin Laden's death was leaked on Twitter by navy intelligence officer and former Bush staffer Keith UrbahnThe announcement led to an explosion in interest and searching on news websites, causing a bigger spike in the US than the Royal Wedding on Friday. Dave Karow, senior product manager at Keynote Systems, a web monitoring service, told the Venturebeat site that the spike was so large that some news sites were struggling to cope, and seeing their response times slowed so that they took six times longer to respond, or even crashed under the load. Mobile sites were particularly vulnerable, Karow suggested, as people logged in from smartphones wherever they were to read the news.

AnnaEsse wrote:Surprise surprise! The CIA is now warning of revenge attacks. Bin Laden died years ago and this is the lead up, imo, to Obama's redemption in the eyes of the public: a 'false flag,' event where he will play the hero, rallying the American people against the great threat. It may even be a Libyan who plans this major event, which would give Obama the excuse to really send in the big guns.

2001 I believe Anna.

Fern

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